"A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create."
- Bertrand Russel 1927

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Monkey Junction

Another posting I should have done a while back.Last month Kathy and I went down to the beaches of North Carolina to celebrate Andy Blocha’s 40th Birthday.KureBeach near Wilmington.The weather was in the unbelievable 70s, allowing us to swim in the friggin’ ocean in November, so we all behaved like little happy loons in the water. The evenings were a wonderful time to catch up with plenty of drink, and spend a little kid-free time. The food in the restaurants, however, was abysmal.I could try to say that Kathy and I are becoming too much like snotty foodies, but actually no one could stomach the acres of soggy deep fried seafood.

It was a great time catching up with Dan and Andy, who are both doing well; but both should try to get involved in the 21st century a bit more – Googling “Andy Blocha” in quotes currently leads to only one hit – an obscure bulletin board in Polish that appears to be about poker.Dan fairs a bit better – you at least get several hits for Google Mail invites he’s received.

On the way back from a celebratory dinner, which at least had some superb seafood chowder, we were driving back our of the restaurant parking lot when a somewhat crazed young woman asked us for a hitchhike ride to ‘Monkey Junction.’She was clearly drunk and we just chalked it up to inebriation or our inability to understand what she was saying.Turns out that the place does exist:

“The name Monkey Junction harkens back to the 1920s when the bus to CarolinaBeach stopped at this intersection. An enterprising gas station nearby featured live monkeys as an attraction to draw customers from the bus. When the driver stopped, he announced, "Monkey Junction," and that’s how it has been known ever since.”